The Blog of Rob

Today I updated to the latest version of SY9 (an update long overdue). It was relatively painless, as usual, but I did come across an issue with the Atom Feeds. Anyone else using Serendipity might want to check out my solution.

David Brin has written an article on Salon, 'Why Johnny can't code' (click on the advert link to read the full article) in which he bemoans the lack of an accessible, built in basic interpreter, with low level hardware access, on modern computers. His specific issue is that his son has a number of (maths) text books which include BASIC examples to help the student, and these examples, which would have worked just fine on any home computer as recently as ten (maybe fifteen) years ago (not an unreasonable timespan in school text book land) are now basically useless to the average school kid in modern times. This will of course lead to a generation of children who don't really understand how computers work, leading to the eventual decline and fall of (American) civilisation.

There are a number of flaws (I think) in his argument, but first I want to address the flaws in the responses (some of which have already been dealt with by Mr Brin, but hey...). Predictably there are a number of responses along the lines of: "BASIC!? He shouldn't be trying to learn that, learn a reasonable language like Xxxx." Where 'Xxxx' is equal to any number of currently cool scripting languages. As if it's the text book's fault for using BASIC in the first place and then not having a sensible upgrade solution in order to keep up with the pace of home computer technology, and schools would devote their meagre funds to buying a whole new set of books each year just so they could be compatible with Python 2.x. A lot of folk, including a large subset of those in the previous section, seem to think this is an issue about teaching kids to program - no, it isn't - it's about teaching kids maths using the program as a dynamic way to explore the concepts while simultaneously teaching them about the procedural logic which is at the heart of computers. Not that BASIC is required to do that, mind you. Others have said: "Just Google for it - here's a long list of BASIC interpreters you can download and install." Of course, these are probably the people who, much like David's son, were/are conscientious children and were willing to go that little bit further just to make sure they fully understood their maths homework - they would be quite happy to download a few, translate the examples into the particular dialect of BASIC and try and make them work. Meanwhile, I've already done my homework and am sitting watching the telly...

Now onto the article itself:

BASIC was close enough to the algorithm that you could actually follow the reasoning of the machine as it made choices and followed logical pathways.

This, I think, is a misunderstanding of what an algorithm is - an algorithm is more abstract than an implementation in BASIC rather than 'more actual' as he seems to be implying (ie. algorithms are usually much more cleanly expressed in higher level languages rather than the other way around). Though this is apparently a syntactic issue rather than a problem with his argument - which seems to be that BASIC is close to how the computation is translated into machine code or assembler, and this is almost certainly not true (my very poor understanding of compiler/interpretor technology notwithstanding).

Those textbook exercises were easy, effective, universal, pedagogically interesting -- and nothing even remotely like them can be done with any language other than BASIC. Typing in a simple algorithm yourself, seeing exactly how the computer calculates and iterates in a manner you could duplicate with pencil and paper -- say, running an experiment in coin flipping, or making a dot change its position on a screen, propelled by math and logic, and only by math and logic: All of this is priceless.

This is where his argument is weakest, and where he gives an opportunity for the language zealots to leap in - of course there are other languages which can do (something like) this. Forgetting, for the moment, my previous point that the BASIC version isn't showing you 'exactly how the computer calculates and iterates', there are several other languages that offer a similar experience - FORTRAN, Pascal and Logo just off the top of my head. His point shouldn't be (and, for the most part, isn't) what a great teaching language BASIC is (because, as we all know, the hardest people to teach computer science to are the ones who think they know it already because they wrote a BASIC program on their VIC-20), but that modern computers should provide a backwards-compatible learning environment which allows children to experience computation, and they should provide it installed by default, and it should be capable of doing useful things.

Of course, his ultimate solution was to buy a second-hand Commodore 64 off eBay - and if that was a satisfactory solution then why didn't he just install an C64 emulator (or this C64 emulator, or this C64 emulator and this C64 emulator which actually let you type in BASIC programs from a web browser - not much is simpler to set up than that, or any of these C64 emulators) in the first place?

Finally the most useful comment I think was the guy who said that if schools (and text book writers) wanted a simple (but low level) programming for schoolchildren then they should set about producing one themselves. Almost certainly attempts are underway already, but this post has already been a long one so I'll save that for another day.

Been meaning to post about these books for a while now. Having ripped through The Liveship Traders, followed by The Farseer Trilogy and then The Tawny Man Trilogy basically as fast as I could afford to buy the books, I was quite keen to read the new novels. Note to others who follow in my footsteps (ha!) - I read the three trilogies out of order, mainly because I had the first book in the Liveship trilogy sitting on my shelf for about five years after acquiring it 'on special offer' from a BCA membership.

I got Shaman's Crossing a few months ago and I finished the sequel, Forest Mage, last month. I was all set to write up a review and link it in to some insightful remarks about Hobb's rather aggressive attitude to fan fiction, but then she went and replaced the rant on her site with one about books to movies and that took the wind out of my sails somewhat.

OK, so I'm all ready now! First off, the fan fiction thing. I read the rant and, while I can empathise with her feelings that other people making her characters do things she never wanted them to is kind of disgusting, a sort of combination between masturbatory 'fiction porn' and being forced to do something very horrible indeed against your will, I wonder if her feelings on the subject are so strong because 'Robin Hobb' (real name Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden) is herself a fictional creation? Despite my (probably very unfounded) opinion of her underlying motivations I did find myself agreeing strongly with her sentiments that, as a fledgeling writer, you're much better off trying to write in your own world with your own characters then trying to steal someone else's. Whatever her opinions, it doesn't seem be stemming the tide much - the Robin Hobb Yahoo! Group has in the tagline 'Fan fiction always welcome'.

So, now the Soldier Son Trilogy. This has, it seems, excited a certain amount of controversy among diehard Hobb fans, some have claimed to hate it, others have claimed to really enjoy it, and still others have been a bit guarded saying, it'll get better when we have the whole trilogy to read. The comments on Amazon about the first book are really quite entertaining - ranging from one to five stars and with varying degrees of vitriol, here are some (negative) outtakes:

I suppose it just goes to show that the well of creativity for some writers definitley runs dry.(J. P. Nowlin)

Out of hundreds upon hundreds of books I have read I have only not finished a book twice, this one being number 2. Highly disappointed. (Jon Corbett)

I wonder if Robin Hobb is embarassed that she wrote this book. ( Shannon B Davis)

I think a lot of people are concerned about the nature of the competing factions in the story - basically the 'environmentalists' are the bad guys, which is fairly unusual in my experience of the F&SF genre. This is a typical quote:

It created quite a dilemma for me - although the main character survived and saved his friends, I found myself wishing that the "bad guys" had won, and been able to keep their land and forests free from logging, etc. ( Shannon B Davis)

I think this highlights the central issue here - people are obviously not reading to be challenged, to look at things from a different perspective, but to have their current views encouraged and endorsed. It also seems to be a very common opinion that the whole plotline is some sort of parallel to the way fledgling America dealt with the Indian tribes - personally I think this is a bit of a reach, the story of a nation cut off from it's own harbours turning inland to battle an indigenous people that they've lived with, basically peacefully, for centuries, in an attempt to rebuild their own natural resources is not really analogous to a bunch of foreigners turning up on the coast and then using a combination of military muscle, betrayal and disease to exterminate a race they'd never met before through the course of three hundred years (in fact, in the book, even the disease is backwards). If it seems the same in some people's heads I suggest that's more to do with what's in their heads than what's in the book.

The other common criticism is that the protagonist is, well, a bit dull. In this case the criticism is a little more fair, but I personally didn't have too much trouble seeing him as a product of his upbringing, and I'm sure I didn't find him nearly so tedious as many others have claimed. In fact, I'm inclined to agree with this reviewer:

Excellent first book, if a bit too subtle for some readers ... I think that some of the delight of this book (and I suspect this trilogy) is watching his perceptions change as he is thrown into the "real world." (A. Galaitsis)

Overall, I liked both books, certainly I had no trouble finishing them like some of the above critics, though I also didn't stay up late into the night to read 'just one more chapter' like I'd been doing for the previous nine Robin Hobb books I'd read.

PS. What's with Amazon and this 'Real Name™' mularky? I have a real name, it doesn't belong to Amazon, why would it be a trade mark?